SOA-C03 Networking and content delivery

A CloudFront distribution uses an ALB in us-east-1 as its only origin, and users in Europe and Asia report slow first loads. What improves performance for those users?

Show answer and explanation

Answer: A

CloudFront terminates user connections at the nearest edge location, so cached objects are delivered with short round trips instead of crossing the ocean to us-east-1. Cache hit ratio determines the benefit, so cache behaviors and TTLs should be tuned for the content being served.

The origin stays in one Region regardless; edge caching is the mechanism that hides that distance.

Why the other options are wrong

  • B. Extra load balancers do not help unless there are origins in those Regions and a routing or caching layer in front of them.
  • C. Latency-based DNS routing picks the closest record, but with a single origin every Region still points at us-east-1.
  • D. Direct Connect serves a customer's own network, not general internet users in Europe and Asia.

Keep going. 419 SOA-C03 questions, answers explained after each one.

Practise this domain

Reviewed November 2026. Spotted a problem with this question? Report it from the practice tool.